


A Concerned Third Party

by Trinket2018



Series: Machine Intelligence [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV), Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Artificial Intelligence, Crossover, Gen, Post Series, Sentient Atlantis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 18:55:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13596288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trinket2018/pseuds/Trinket2018
Summary: Mr. Greer’s number comes up. Mr. Greer oversteps his bounds once too often, and The Machine’s rival, Samaritan, takes unexpected action.





	A Concerned Third Party

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to my crossover ‘A Very Private Person’, two years after Finch and Reese helped Daniel when his number came up. It occurred to me that with Samaritan coming live, and if Atlantis remained anchored off San Francisco harbor, that the world had not two, but three, fully active AI systems in competition, and one, even with a twenty thousand year hiatus alone at the bottom of an alien ocean, was millions of years old. DISCLAIMER: Stargate SG-1 & Stargate Atlantis, the characters and universe are the property of Kawoosh Productions, Showtime/Viacom, Sony/MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions and the Sci-Fi Channel. Person of Interest, the characters and universe are the property of Kilter Productions & Bad Robot. No copyright infringement is intended. I have absolutely no right to be playing with them or their universes. I just gotta. I promise to get nothing out of it but personal satisfaction. Rating: PG-13 for mild profanity. Spoilers: Set after the end of the Stargate Atlantis series: Atlantis is still anchored off San Francisco under a cloaking dome. Set PoI season 4 (before actress Sarah Shahi left on maternity leave).

Å 

“You are being watched. The government has a secret system, a Machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I designed the Machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything; violent crimes involving ordinary people. The government considers these people irrelevant. We don’t. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You’ll never find us. But victim or perpetrator, if your number’s up, we’ll find you.” ~ Harold Finch, ‘admin’ of the Machine.

Å 

Control slowed as she approached the end of the corridor, and the entrance to the huge, darkened space that was oddly empty, and rather chilly. The main light came from an immense monitor that covered the far wall, edge to edge, floor to ceiling, with a matt white background, and multiple overlapping windows constantly springing up and fading back, changing size, shifting for dominance, re-aligning and with captions in black print or red highlighting. A long table equipped with laptops and half a dozen operators faced the monitor wall. To one side stood a slender, impeccably dressed older gentlemen with a shock of white hair, holding one elbow with his left hand, tapping his chin with his right index finger, contemplating the information spewing out before him. 

Control lingered a moment in the shadows, trying to make sense of the dizzy array of information, and the man who seemed to orchestrate it. She couldn’t help but compare him to another fastidious little man, this one with receding black hair, large thick glasses, a pronounced limp, and a tight unhappy expression, as if he had sucked a lemon. The two were like bookends in her mind, opposite ends of an argument she wrestled with daily.

Taking a deep breath and marshaling her resolve, she forged out into the cavernous home of Samaritan, the super computer system that was the current spearhead of the world’s security and intelligence gathering efforts.

The gentleman visibly startled when he finally noticed her soft-footed approach, but never lost his urbane, slightly smug smile. 

“Madame Control. What an unexpected pleasure to see you here. To what do we owe the honor of this visit?”

Control didn’t trouble herself to study the small elegant man. He had been trained by the very best his home country could boast during the post-world-war cold war, before she could write her own name. She knew she stood no hope of unraveling his secrets with any mere cursory examination. Instead, she tried to follow the flood of information on the monitor dominating the space. 

“It occurs to me, Mr. Greer, that I have been remiss in not asking certain questions about the programming parameters of your machine.”

Greer did wince at that, a betrayal that was most unlike him, and therefore probably calculated for effect. “Samaritan, if you please, Madame. Not… Machine.”

“Because that’s what Mr. Finch calls his system?” Control nodded acknowledgement of the distinction. “Very well. Your Samaritan. Finch’s Machine was closed to us, so we never had the luxury of asking these questions of him, or it. But now we have that opportunity, and I should have taken advantage of it immediately. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure why it never occurred to me before. I guess I just got used to the situation… of having an all-seeing, all-knowing entity at hand that would answer prayers, but not questions.”

“And what questions would those be.”

Control allowed a ghost of a smile to cross her face. It was a duel, or maybe a chess match, between them. And they were both old hands, and knew each other’s moves as well as they knew their own. 

“I’d like to ask about definitions. How does Samaritan define a ‘National Security Threat’, for example? Is it the number of lives at risk? Or the type of lives at risk? For instance, is it a dozen common people, or a hundred? Ten congressmen or senators, or one? Is the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee worth more in its calculations than, say, a neurosurgeon or ball-player? I ask, because it occurred to me that Peter Collier, the late lamented head of the domestic terrorist organization known as Vigilance, may have had a valid point. I have personally been responsible for terminating a great many lives. Not all of them were guilty of any crime. Some of them were killed out of expediency alone, or were the expected collateral damage of some operation deemed more vital than the innocent lives at risk. You’ve been in similar situations yourself, no doubt, with even less authority, from a private sector perspective, motivated solely, as far as I can tell, from… economic interests. What’s to stop your M… sorry, Samaritan, from deciding you, or I, are the Threat, and issuing the order to eliminate us?”

Mr. Greer practically oozed smarm. “My dear Madame Control, were I to intercept such a command from Samaritan, rest assured I would resist acting upon it.”

“And Samaritan would have no way to get around you? Send the order to one of your jacked-in minions, without your knowledge?”

“That would be highly unlikely.”

“I see. And if you, or I, were to take some action of which your Samaritan did not approve… ordered a termination or an armed assault, for reasons of our own, unrelated to National or World Security… or if we, simply, failed to act upon its advice… what would its response be? Would it issue a warning? Make threats? Would it take some action to make us follow its wishes?”

The smile had finally left that lined face, and his eyes were cold and hard as he studied Control. “I assume there is a reason for these questions.”

“Naturally. Why don’t we ask Samaritan itself? Samaritan. Do you hear me?”

Across the center of the monitor came a window and the printed message, “Yes, Madame Control. I hear you.”

“Were you following my conversation with Mr. Greer?”

“Yes, Madame Control.”

“I was sent an official encrypted e-mail this morning with a link to a news report for an incident that occurred in New York City yesterday afternoon. Was that message from you?”

“Yes it was.”

“Would you bring up the link for Mr. Greer, please?”

In the central space a window came up with a cable network feed, date and time-stamped the day before. A series of frenetic images that were obviously culled from people’s smart phones, and maybe a hand-held camera or two, washed across the window as an excitable female announcer attempted to report. 

“The calm of this New York City sidewalk café was shattered earlier today by the sudden attack of a dozen heavily armed men, who arrived in a number of black SUVs with stolen plates. But almost as soon as they arrived, they were contained and disarmed by two full squads of Marines, who just happened to be in the area at the same time.”

The action in the window showed a highly professional group of mercenaries, all dressed in black, wearing black ski-masks, armed with military ordnance, jumping out of three SUVs. But, as smooth and highly trained as they were, they were easily intercepted by the sudden appearance of an equal number of what were evidently Marines, wearing civilian dress, rising out of chairs at the café, emerging from doorways nearby, swooping in to contain the threat. The Marines didn’t bother with weapons, merely used a number of lightning fast hand-to-hand moves that blurred too fast for the camera to pick up, leaving the black-garbed mercs in groaning piles on the sidewalk, disarmed and with plastic zip-ties hog-tying them helpless.

Really, it was a work of art, that operation.

“No shots were fired, but there were a number of injuries among the unknown assailants as they attempted to resist arrest. Customers at the café were alarmed, but were soon allowed to finish their coffees and pastries in peace. One patron interviewed said he was shocked and appalled at the attack.”

The camera focused on a good-looking man, tall, cinnamon colored hair and deep, riveting blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, dressed casually in tan slacks and a plaid button-down shirt. He stared into the camera, obviously highly offended. “I don’t know what they were thinking! There’s an elementary school just across the street, just letting the kids out for the day! They could have hit any of the children with their guns!” The man pointed, and the cameraman obligingly focused across the busy street to the school, crowds of small children running to the busses waiting at the curb. 

The reporter took the screen again. “There is no word on the motive for the attack. The Marines turned the assailants over to local law enforcement officers. In a bizarre turn, I have been informed by city officials that all twelve members of the assault team were later found dead in the precinct holding cells. Early speculation is that all of the unknown men committed suicide.”

A final swing of the camera over the scene showed the interviewed man sitting casually at an outdoor sidewalk table, still ruffled and huffing in offense, muttering to his companion, a small man in glasses and a dark suit, drinking tea from a cup and saucer, a rather nice large dog lying by his chair. 

Control and Mr. Greer didn’t need to mention the small man was Harold Finch. Or that his coffee companion was not any of the people known to be his Machine’s operatives.

Once the cable feed was paused on the last word, apparently ready for replay, Control turned to face Mr. Greer. “I am aware that you consider Harold Finch and his Machine a threat to your operation. Competition, if nothing else. I surmise that you are attempting to neutralize them both. I have chosen not to get involved, one way or the other. But there is an issue of collateral damage that you evidently don’t bother to consider in your efforts.”

Greer’s smarm was back in full force as he loaded his voice with mocking contempt. “You mean the school-yard full of dear little kiddies across the street?”

Control’s smile was shark-like.

“Not at all. Samaritan. Please identify the man who was having coffee with Mr. Finch at that café?”

There was an avalanche of windows spilling across the monitor, obliterating everything else. Every tech in the room stopped what they were doing, blinking in confusion at the momentary hi-jacking of their work. 

“Doctor Daniel Jackson?” Greer read out in confusion. Now he was the one trying to read and follow Samaritan’s connections. Credentials, identity cards, reports, the cover page of various scholarly publications, internet web pages devoted to some sort of alien conspiracy theorists, a link to security footage of him, bizarrely, addressing the Senate Appropriations Committee in Washington DC… 

“An archeologist?” Greer demanded in affront. “Of what possible relevance could he be?”

Almost in answer, a single window was overlaid a whole series of heavily redacted Pentagon reports, a document with the heading, ‘Must Protect List’.

Control heard it before Greer did, as distracted as he was trying to piece together why Dr. Daniel Jackson might be of such interest. She smiled and turned to face the group of people in forest camouflage BDU uniforms arriving. A few of the men and women in Marine garb, obviously a security detail, might have been recognizable from the cable news report of the café attack. They fanned out across the room in experienced precision, to effectively guard the entire facility, taking an at ease position. None of them pulled weapons, but they all had them, and were all ready to use them. 

By the time Greer, and his own ex-Decima security, were aware, the Marines were already in place, and the one Major among them was making a discreet ‘all-clear’ call in his radio. 

Then the big guns arrived. At their head was an Air Force four-star General in class A uniform, tall, wiry, piercing dark brown eyes and iron grey hair, his entire chest covered in ribbons, the kind you get from decades of excellence and dedicated service in the front lines. He sauntered in with the deceptive casual nonchalance of a jet jockey, as if he owned the place, and cast a jaundiced glare at the monitor. 

“So this is the big Brain, hunh?” He sounded singularly unimpressed.

Behind him trailed a number of military and civilians, an odd assortment of advisors. Three Air Force full-bird Colonels, two men with the same cocky fly-boy strut and casual at-home manner as their General, the third a blond woman who zeroed in on one of the laptop stations and quickly displaced the tech seated there. Two civilians, uncomfortable despite their expensive and well-fitted suits. One was the mysterious Dr. Jackson, who stood by the General, blinking disgruntled at the monitor and the blown-up pictures of himself from behind gold-rimmed glasses. The other civilian, with a ski-jump nose and receding hair-line, had the same fierce, intent look as the female Colonel, and swept in on a second control station like a scud missile. 

“What is the meaning of this?” Greer barked out, serious for once.

Control smiled, ignoring him and offered a hand to shake to the General. “Jack. Good to see you so soon. Thanks for coming.”

“Are you kidding? I had to get a look at the latest in a long line of over-the-top inflated bad guys who thought they could take a pot shot at Danny and get away with it. So you’re Greer? General Jack O’Neill. Two ‘l’s. Director of Home World Security.”

Greer, well acquainted with the intelligence community, knew the name and the formidable reputation of this man. “You’re not the Director of Homeland Security… Wait. Did you say Home World Security? Never heard of it.”

Samaritan obligingly brought up several new windows, all with Pentagon and United Nations top-secret files, so heavily redacted that little more than the date showed. 

“Yeah, well, it’s classified. Look, Greer, it’s come to our attention that your little operation here might need a bit of over-sight from my office. I think I’m inclined to agree, considering the mess you made of Danny’s coffee break yesterday.”

Greer eyed the ruthless and efficient way the blonde Colonel and the sharp-nosed civilian were working their way into Samaritan’s systems. “Samaritan is the private property of Decima and its agency. Our agreement with the United States Government…” 

“Yeah, well, that agreement is now null and void. Call it Eminent Domain.” 

“What! Wait…”

“Carter? You in yet?”

The woman spared little attention to the General, tossing a distracted, “Give me a minute here, sir,” over her shoulder.

“McKay? How about you? And don’t tell me you aren’t trying to one-up Carter, because we all know you are.” One of the male Colonels at the back, the one with the unruly cow-licked black hair, snickered at that.

“Oh my God, and I thought Ancient programming was byzantine… this is absolutely Machiavellian! What kind of patch protocol do you people use, anyway? You realise most of this stuff is like putting a Doctor Barbie band aid on a sucking chest wound, right? It isn’t even the same language! It’s like you’ve been trying to edit War and Peace from the original Russian, in pigeon English, in crayon!” 

Colonel Carter smirked at the civilian. “You don’t need to drill down into the code, McKay. We just need it to spit out the evidence we need. Let the system do the work. That’s what it’s made for.”

“While you’re at it,” spoke Dr. Jackson, “could you get it to take down that picture?”

“I dunno, Jackson,” said the second male Colonel at the back, the one who looked enough like Jackson to be a cousin or brother, “it’s kinda cute. All that floppy hair and big-eyed innocence. Vala would love it.”

“It’s over twenty years old, from my university ID, for crying out loud. Look at that hair! And the taped-together glasses… that’s from my starving student days. Why would this… machine even want to show it?” 

As if in answer, one window began a rapid slide-show of photos, all of Dr. Jackson, in chronological order, showing his evolution from student, academic, civilian consultant, into his present incarnation.

“Okay, so now you’ve identified me, you can just… shut it down.”

Greer stared at the man resentfully. “I’m afraid Samaritan has not identified you adequately to me. And what’s this about the ‘Must Protect List’?”

Control smiled, fully appreciating this moment. “Surely you’re aware of the List, Mr. Greer? I believe you were on it yourself, for a brief time.”

Greer’s eyes narrowed, then swung back to the window that displayed the list. His own name – his true name - used to be number eight. As far as he was aware, it should still have been there, somewhere. But it seemed to have been deleted. Dr. Jackson’s name, however, was in the top five, behind the President and his immediate family.

“Wait, his name is ahead of mine?” McKay demanded. There was indeed a Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay on this same list, number twelve. “How is that right? Okay, so I’m after Carter, that’s just favoritism at work because she happens to be American and I’m not, but… behind an archeologist? A soft scientist? When archeology is barely even a soft science! It’s way worse than medicine, even!” 

Dr. Jackson didn’t appear to take this personally, just shaking his head and grimacing.

“Whoa, buddy,” said the colonel with the unruly black hair, patting McKay on the back. “The Brits have you ranked right behind the Royal Family, right? SG-1 doesn’t get a mention till somewhere in the twenties.”

“Well yes, of course. I’m part of the Commonwealth.”

“There ya go,” his Colonel told him, soothing ruffled feathers with practised ease.

“Don’t have a cow, McKay,” recommended General O’Neill (with two ‘l’s). “He’s ahead of me on the list, too. Which brings us back to my problem, Greer. You know of the Must Protect List. I know of it. Control knows of it. Samaritan certainly knows all about it. When you sent out your little assault on coffee yesterday, did you take into account that someone on that list, in the top five, no less, was in the direct path of your mercs?”

There was no good answer to these questions, even as video began to play in background, showing a frustrated and furious Greer commanding his people to continue with their mission, in spite of texts ordering them to hold off.

“The man known to us as Harold Finch is a high-value target, a cyber-terrorist in possession of a system that rivals Samaritan, and poses a significant threat to all of us.”

“Yeah, no, the Machine is pretty harmless, unless you pose a threat to people,” O’Neill denied. “Come on, Carter. You’re looking for the name Collier. How hard can it be?” 

“What are you doing?” Greer demanded. “This system is protected on the highest levels by National Security protocols, and…”

“Presidential Order,” O’Neill declared, waving a piece of paper under Greer’s nose. “Carter?”

“Got it!” McKay announced smugly. “You should have been looking under his real name. Peter Brand.”

The blonde woman straightened and glared at her competitor. “Not so smug, McKay. I wasn’t actually looking for him. I found a conduit to allow access. You want to plug in, or not?”

McKay scowled at O’Neill. “You scammed me,” he grumbled. 

Windows began flashing with the evidence that Mr. Greer and his Decima agents had not only created the cyber-terrorist organization Vigilance and set Peter Brand up, but were responsible for the explosion that prompted the US government to give Samaritan carte blanche over their security. 

O’Neill rubbed his hands together in glee and he nodded to Control. “There it is. That’s the ticket, McKay. Now, you think your little pet can teach Samaritan to be a good little law-abiding citizen, like the Machine?” 

McKay grumbled as he brought a laptop and cables over to Carter’s station. Plugged in, up and running, he said only, “Running. Atlanta, are you there?”

A new panel opened on the monitor, and a deep female voice echoed in the cavernous space. “I am present, Dr. McKay. I have access to Samaritan’s coding. I will need some time to correct programming errors and redundancies. A significant risk to the planet for a span of the twenty-seven-point-three-one hours.” 

“And in the meantime?”

“I suggest allowing the Machine to resume normal function.”

“No!” cried out Mr. Greer.

“Yes,” O’Neill insisted. “Control? You want to take this guy and his minions into custody? And check for weapons of personal destruction. You know these guys like to take the lovers leap rather than be taken.”

There were sufficient numbers of marines already securing Greer’s security when he was himself grabbed and zip-tied.

“Okay, Mitchell. Get Daniel’s friend in here.”

Before Greer even reached the exit, more security forces were bringing Harold Finch, and his operatives, into the Samaritan control room. Even the dog was there with them, on a leash, growling at Greer as he was taken away. 

The blond woman, Carter, looked up and smiled. “Mr. Finch. Please, have a seat.”

“Thank you, Colonel Carter.”

The tall, thin, dark-haired woman with shadowed eyes leaned over Harold’s shoulder as he went to work. John followed his boss in, then peeled off, a faint smile passing his lips as he watched the ex-Decima security being dragged away. One yelped on his way out the door, blocked by a short, dark woman with a smug look on her face. 

“Oh, sorry, did I trip you?” 

John and Shaw fell into line next to O’Neill and Daniel Jackson. John’s eyes followed the dizzying flow of information across the monitor.

“That’s Samaritan?” Shaw asked. “Can I shoot it?”

“Woman after my own heart,” O’Neill grinned. 

“No! God, no, that’s just a display,” McKay blustered. “It would be like shooting out your big-screen TV and thinking you had killed Bennie Hill.” 

“Bennie who?”

“Never mind. Okay, killing characters on Wormhole Xtreme reruns.” 

“Oh. Okay. Gotcha. No shooting the big fancy TV set.” Shaw glanced at John out of the corner of her eye and winked. She wasn’t that dumb about technology…

Suddenly, the centre of the screen opened a square window with a single flashing green cursor. Then a line of characters. 

“Acknowledging Admin.”

“Direct transmission of Relevant List to this IP address.”

“Acknowledged.”

There flowed a string of numbers, most of them nine digits long, but some in a slightly different format, and a few in a different language character set. The sound of a printer ground away in the background, then stopped. An aide who had come in with Control brought her a print-out. 

Without even looking at it, Control glanced at Harold, then O’Neill. “Thank you, gentlemen. A pleasure doing business with you.”

“Pleasure is all mine, ma’am,” O’Neill said, tipping a mocking salute, and a grin that had been charming hardened politicians for years now. 

Even Control was not immune, as she couldn’t suppress a wry smile of her own. But duty called, and she had numbers to send on their way. She nodded to John and Shaw, stared neutrally at the back of Finch’s head, while he ignored her completely, then she left. 

“Okay. So. That wasn’t so tough,” O’Neill declared, looking around with satisfaction. “Is it my imagination, or is it getting easier to save the world from megalomaniac super villains with delusions of godhood and weapons of cyber-mass-destruction?”

Daniel didn’t even bother to comment as he shifted over to the smart-kids table. 

“Ouch, tough crowd,” General Jack O’Neill muttered. “So, John, here’s what’s going to go down. Home World Security, that’s me and my guys, are taking over super computer security operations. We got Samaritan and your Machine under a new department we’re calling Hal 9000… no, just kidding. I really wanted to go with Skynet, but they vetoed me on that one, too. So we’re calling it Project Gemini. Harold is going to be in charge. I’m not sure what we’re going to do with two competing systems doing the same job, doesn’t sound like a hot idea to me, but Carter thinks she can run parallel simulations, use results to cross check each other. Or maybe we’ll have one running domestic while the other runs foreign… who the hell knows. We’ll work it out as we go. Control gets the Relevant List, like always. Her department knows what to do. But we’re going to cut down on her cowboy operations. No blowing away poor schmucks because they’ve guessed big brother is watching. No, we got a better plan. 

“This buddy of mine, Martin Lloyd, has an idea for a nifty new TV show, called Person of Interest, about this renegade nerd programmer and his special ops side-kick, who get a list of people about to be in big trouble from a super secret super computer… we think it’s going to be a bigger hit than Wormhole Extreme. 

“Anyhoo, I know the Machine gives your team a second list. I imagine that’ll continue. I’m giving you guys a budget for your own security ops, and assigning some of my SFs full time. Anybody else you want to pull in has to sign non-disclosure agreements out the wazoo, and we will throw them in a deep dark hole if they blab. Right?”

“Gotcha,” John said, somewhat suspiciously. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. We’re making honest people out of you. Giving you badges, over-ride authority on just about any other federal agency, a clubhouse and everything. Which might pinch your wings a little, since any cases you develop may have to produce legal evidence for the proper authorities… You answer to Harold, he answers to me, I answer to the President and the IOC. That’s the International Oversight Committee, and not one of those guys is stupid enough to protest any action these machines advise to prevent terrorist acts.”

John and Shaw traded looks. “Sounds too good to be true,” Simene protested. 

“Oh, it is,” O’Neill assured. “I’m your Oversight. If I don’t like what you do, or what your Machine does, or what Samaritan does, I’ll pull the plug so fast your head will spin. And even as I speak, there is a third AI checking those two systems, making sure they’re coded to play nice, and implanting the necessary kill-switch I’ll need.”

John’s blood ran cold. “A third system? Jack, we’ve had enough trouble with just one competing machine…” 

“Hey, Atlanta, say hi to John, here.”

“John Reese. Hello. You would not prefer me to use your birth-name?”

“No! No, that’s okay. Reese is fine. You’re a system like Finch’s Machine?”

“No. I am not. I am the Atlantis artificial intelligence matrix. I am millions of years old, with the accumulated experience of the Alteran race, which is much older, in my databanks. My computing capacity and memory is vastly superior to anything humankind will be able to develop in the foreseeable future. However, I find the Machine intriguing. Samaritan has significant flaws which would prove dangerous to humans, but the Machine is largely free from that type of error.”

“And the Machine helped us with that little mess Danny got himself into a few years back—”

“Hey!” protested Dr. Jackson from the other side of the room.

“So that puts you guys and Harold’s Machine in my good books forever. I may even let you get away with screwing up. Once.”

“Excuse me, General O’Neill. Mr. Finch has completed his connection over-rides to the Samaritan system.”

Over at the smart-kids console, Carter, McKay and Root were all peering over Harold’s shoulder, to watch as he typed in his code. 

“Okay,” McKay said grudgingly, “that’s pretty damn elegant coding.”

Harold spared him a wry glance. “Thank you. But your admiration is not necessary. I’ve been preparing to over-ride Samaritan from the moment I realized it was going to pose a significant threat. I just wasn’t sure I would ever get the opportunity. There. You can power down Samaritan now without loss of coverage.”

He generously offered the keyboard to Colonel Carter, and let her complete the shut down command to the primary system, replacing it with the secondary. 

On the monitors, the white backgrounds and red highlighted windows shut down one after another, until only the square with the more old-fashioned black backdrop and green print was left. 

With a sigh, Harold closed his eyes and removed his glasses to rub absently at the lenses. Daniel chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Harold. We’ve got Greer and his Decima goons all locked up. It’s over. Business as usual for your Machine.”

“Better than usual, I hope,” Finch sighed. “I’m not sure John and I coming out of the closet, as it were, is for the best.”

Root hung on his neck and chuckled. “Don’t you worry, Harry. If there’s any trouble ahead, she’ll tell me, and I’ll get you out of it.”

“And John too?”

She sighed in an aggrieved tone. “Must I? Can’t your monkey get himself out?”

Daniel chuckled. “At last resort, we’ll come for him,” the archeologist promised. “I still owe you both, remember, for having my six when no one else did.”

Colonel Carter winced at that. “Don’t remind me!”

“By the way, Daniel, I can’t help but ask… how did you know I would be at that café yesterday?”

Daniel grinned. “A little digital bird told me. I got a phone call from the Machine.”

“You did?” Harold blinked, and even Root straightened to stare at the archeologist. 

“The Dewey Decimal System is practically my mother tongue,” Daniel assured. “Archeologist? Research assistant way back when? Head of Archives back at my base. It didn’t take me long to realize I was getting a code delivered to me. I’m pretty good with codes and ciphers. I’m not sure of the application in your work, but what she gave me was the GPS coordinates for that café, a date and time. All I had to do was show up. How did you get there?”

Harold sighed. “I got a number, too. Mr. Greer’s number. We followed him for two days, and each morning he turned up at that café for eleven o’clock tea. We suspected a trap, but I thought it was for me. That somehow he had found a way to influence my Machine. I couldn’t not show up. But I certainly didn’t expect you to be there, Daniel.”

Daniel smiled. 

Jack rocked back and forth on his feet, a satisfied smile firmly in place. “So. All’s Well that Ends Well.”

The shrill ringing of a telephone echoed into the control room.

Å


End file.
